


Caravan to Lapland

by aeli_kindara



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, F/F, Weddings, cherries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-22
Updated: 2006-04-22
Packaged: 2019-02-28 08:23:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13267497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeli_kindara/pseuds/aeli_kindara
Summary: The war is over. Harry and Ginny are getting married. And Luna has finally found her crumple-horned snorkacks.





	Caravan to Lapland

**Author's Note:**

> For flawedamythyst. Title from "En Vinternatt" by Tomas Tranströmer.

At Ginny’s wedding, she is happy.

At Ginny’s wedding, she smiles and poses for photographs and drags a laughing Harry onto the dance floor and perhaps drinks a little too much, but really, it’s her wedding, and she is happy. She wears the elaborate white gown passed down through her mother’s family for generations — it’s the something old out of the rhyme, of course. Her veil is brand new, her shoes are borrowed (embarrassingly enough) from Great Aunt Muriel, who could never fit in them now in any case, and she laughingly confesses to Harry afterward that it’s her bra that’s blue. He gives her a little wink and murmurs in her ear that he’ll be checking to make sure tonight, and she shivers a little with anticipation.

At Ginny’s wedding, she whirls around the dance floor as if her feet have wings, until they suddenly don’t, and she stumbles right into the young woman talking to Remus Lupin, whose long blonde hair is pulled up in a loose bun at the back of her head, who’s sipping at her glass of water — _"They brainwash you into believing that alcohol is good,” she said_ — and discoursing earnestly, most likely about some imaginary creature. The water spills everywhere as she half turns in surprise and his knocked backward. Ginny is crimson as Harry helps her to her feet, staring down at the water on the floor because she doesn’t dare look up.

“I’m so sorry,” Luna says.

“It was my fault,” Harry insists. Remus has already discreetly signaled to one of the waiters to come and clean up the spill.

But of course it is Ginny’s fault, just as all of this is Ginny’s fault, and with her face and ears burning, she turns and hurries from the dance floor, leaving a bewildered Harry, a mildly perplexed Lupin, and a seemingly imperturbable Luna Lovegood who nevertheless stares after her with eyes perhaps the tiniest bit larger than normal.

At Ginny’s wedding, everything goes wrong.

\---

_Luna giggles when Ginny dangles a cherry above her mouth, and her head darts forward like a bird’s to snatch it from its stem. Sitting up, Ginny puts the stem into her own mouth, and after a few futile moments of struggle, ruefully removes it, as straight as ever. Luna laughs quietly from her prone position._

_Grinning, Ginny abandons the cherry stem and leans down to give the other girl a lingering kiss before resting her head contentedly in the crook of Luna’s arm, the side of her face pressed against Luna’s soft breast._

_“It was never like this with Harry,” she murmurs._

_Luna doesn’t reply._

\---

She hasn’t seen Luna in years, practically not since the end of the war. The last she heard, the rather eccentric Ravenclaw alumna had disappeared into Sweden on an extensive exploration in search of a number of her whimsical creatures. Ginny has no idea what the results of her expedition were, although she doubts they amounted to much. Sending a wedding invitation to her was a matter of course; nearly everyone either of them has ever known was invited, so adding Luna to the guest list was no issue, no reason to rehash the past. In any case, Ginny doubted she would come.

And of course, she did. Now, lying in bed next to Harry, carefully arranging her body around his so that they won’t touch at all, she finds a few startling tears in her eyes. It shouldn’t be happening this way. She and Harry have the perfect life, the fairytale ending she dreamed of from her childhood. Things shouldn’t go wrong like this, not at their wedding. She shouldn’t wake up the morning after wanting nothing more than to get away from him. None of this should be happening at all.

Harry turns over in his sleep, and she starts away from him, nearly falling off the bed. It’s no reason to panic, she tells herself. She’s just getting nervous over the fact that they’re married now. It’s a case of the jitters. She’ll be fine in a few days.

Nevertheless, she rolls out of bed and goes quietly to her wardrobe, pulling out a robe that’s perhaps a bit nicer than her everyday wear and dressing without waking Harry. Ducking into the bathroom, she washes her face quickly and runs a brush a few times through her hair.

She decides to walk. It’s early yet, and she doesn’t know what time Luna gets up — she ignores the small voice that tells her Luna’s always been an early riser. Besides, it’s a pleasant summer morning, before the sun has had time to make the heat unbearable, and the countryside is beautiful here. It really does make her feel oddly nostalgic, moving back to Ottery St. Catchpole after three years in London.

She doesn’t know why she assumes Luna is still living in the same old windmill a few miles away that she and her father used to inhabit. It’s impossible to imagine Luna anywhere else, she supposes. A windmill, after all — so very odd, so very idiosyncratic. So very Luna.

\---

_She isn’t quite sure what drives her to Luna. She could say it’s loneliness, with Harry gone to search for horcruxes, but that wouldn’t be strictly true. She misses him, of course, but there’s more to Luna than a filler for the void Harry’s left. Ginny can’t help but feel that Luna fills more space in her life than Harry ever has._

_In their sixth year, they take to sitting together at lunch. Ginny’s friends are a bit annoyed with her for ditching them in favor of some loony Ravenclaw, but she doesn’t much care for them at the moment; anyone who can worry about such things when there’s a war on is a bit too superficial, really, for her tastes. Sometimes she’s disgusted with the entire school for their mindless frivolity. Luna seems the only one who can look at her earnestly and say “the war” in that matter-of-fact tone that lets her know it’s really happening, that it’s not all just some mad delusion, that she hasn’t been driven to the point of breaking and started to imagine whole worlds different from her own. It’s funny, she would think that with last year’s events, the school would become far more conscious of what’s going on around it, and yet instead it chooses to ignore the danger altogether and throw itself into distraction. This, she decides, is part of why she needs Luna._

_With Harry gone, Dean Thomas starts watching her again, and a few weeks into school, he asks her on a sort-of-a-date — not to Hogsmeade, there aren’t visits there anymore, but just to maybe sit with him at dinner some? She turns him down, but he’s persistent. It’s when he happens to be right there to catch her when she trips in the Great Hall at breakfast that she snaps and starts to rage at him in front of the whole school._

_Dean defends himself with sputtering indignation. Ginny accuses him of taking advantage of Harry’s absence to try and get back together with her, he denies it, and the conflict is quickly escalating into a full-fledged shouting match when Luna arrives, making her presence known with a hand on Ginny’s shoulder._

_“Why don’t you leave Ginny alone, since she wants you to?” she asks, fixing her unblinking stare on Dean._

_“I —” Dean starts. “She’s being — totally unjustified attack — just trying to help —”_

_Somehow, Luna’s presence helps Ginny regain her composure. “I don’t want anything to do with you just now, Dean,” she says coolly, evenly. “If you’ll please stop seeking me out.” She turns on her heel and marches down to the opposite end of the table, Luna following behind her._

_“You must be missing Harry,” Luna says as they sit down. “I understand.” But for once, her eyes are anywhere but Ginny’s face._

\---

Luna is out in her garden when Ginny arrives, dressed in well-worn Muggle clothing that makes Ginny’s robes feel ridiculous and extravagant. She’s carrying a bowl and picking whatever fruit it is that grows on that scraggly tree out in front, occasionally popping one into her mouth. Ginny pauses to watch her from the road, but it’s only a minute before Luna turns and sees her standing there.

“Oh, hello!” She waves cheerfully, ducking out from beneath the branches and making her way to the dirt road where Ginny’s standing, her bowl cradled above her right hip. “Cherry?” she offers, holding it out.

Ginny flushes. “No — no thank you,” she says faintly.

Luna eats another, unphased, turning away from Ginny to spit the stone out. “That one wasn’t very far,” she says disappointedly. “I can normally spit much farther than that.”

“I didn’t know you were back in town,” Ginny says after a moment of profoundly awkward — or so it seems to her — silence.

“Your owl would suggest otherwise,” Luna replies cheerfully.

“Oh — well —” Ginny reddens. “Harry handled the invitations for the first half of the alphabet.” In theory.

“That explains that,” says Luna. “Care to come in for a cup of tea?”

Ginny acquiesces, and Luna leads her across the unruly lawn to the door at the base of the windmill, which pulls open with a slight creaking of hinges to reveal a clean, octagonal kitchen. Ginny has always loved Luna’s house, and she smiles as she takes a seat at one of the stools at the counter. The same as always.

A few minutes later, Luna carries two steaming mugs of tea — she’s remembered Ginny’s favorite — to the counter, and both take slow sips, alternately glancing at each other across the counter over the rims of their mugs.

“Is your father here?” Ginny asks at length.

“Oh,” says Luna, then, “he’s dead, actually.”

Ginny cringes at her own insensitivity, trying to figure out how to salvage the conversation, but Luna eliminates the need.

“That’s actually why I’m back here. To take over _The Quibbler_ for him.” Her voice is as matter-of-fact as it’s always been, as businesslike. It’s easy enough to forget that Ginny’s heard her speak in entirely different tones.

“How did it happen?” she asks waveringly.

“Oh,” says Luna. “It was a heart attack. I was in Lapland at the time. I didn’t get here until a few days after.”

She looks so small just then, so fragile and lost, with her long, sandy hair and big, pale eyes, as innocent and honest as always. Ginny feels the overwhelming urge to give her a hug, but she doesn’t dare, can’t torture herself like that. Instead she says, in a voice so forced even she winces (although Luna doesn’t), “So how have your expeditions been going?”

“I found a colony of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks,” says Luna, and because it’s in the same vague, dreamy tones that she’s always used, it takes a moment for Ginny to realize the significance of her statement. She swallows a rather large amount of hot tea rather suddenly.

“Really?” she manages to gasp, throat burning.

“Yes,” says Luna, and the familiar excitement tingeing her voice gives Ginny some sort of unnamed relief. “I’ve brought one back with me, actually. Would you like to meet him?” Her eyes are bulging a little as they always do when she’s feeling particularly enthusiastic about her work.

“I’d love to,” says Ginny.

\---

_As soon as they’re out of breakfast, Ginny lies, saying she’s forgotten her Transfiguration book, and pulls Luna off down an empty corridor._

_“But you haven’t got Transfiguration today,” Luna says with unusual pragmatism. “And besides, this isn’t the way to Gryffindor tower, is it?”_

_Ginny kisses her._

_Drawing back, she surveys Luna’s face, suddenly terrified that she’s managed to ruin the only friendship at Hogwarts that matters to her anymore._

_Luna gives a small “oh,” and then again, eyes widening and hand going to her lips,_ “oh.”

_Ginny kisses her again._

\---

Luna’s room on the third level is bright and cheerful with windows on all eight sides. Ginny stands in the doorway, surveying the familiar room — there are fewer knickknacks lying around than when she was last here, but it stands to reason that Luna hasn’t yet finished unpacking.

Right now, she’s rummaging around underneath the bed, a look of intense concentration on her face. At last, she sits up with a “hah!” of triumph and withdraws a strange-looking creature from the dusty recesses.

It at first reminds Ginny of a goat, a miniature one, with short legs and a long body — it’s shaped a bit like a dachsund, actually. Its feet are some odd meld of hooves and paws, covered in a hard sheath but divided into several segments. The horns on its head droop oddly to the sides, and when it shakes vigorously, they swing a little, unstable. Its coat is far shaggier than that of a domestic goat, and while its face retains the intelligent and vaguely malicious gleam of any goat’s eyes, it is adorned not with a mouth but a beak which is firmly latched on Luna’s index finger.

She pries it carefully off, wincing a little, and looks up again at Ginny. “This,” she tells her, “is Cuthbert.”

“Pleased to meet you, Cuthbert,” says Ginny, advancing a few steps and bending down to tentatively scratch behind the creature’s horns. After snapping at her for a moment, it relaxes and leans vigorously into her scratching.

Luna laughs aloud. “He likes you. He doesn’t like just anyone, you know.”

Ginny can’t help but feel pleased with herself. “He’s a sweetie.” She pauses. “I can’t believe you really found them. After so many years.”

“I know,” says Luna. “It’s amazing. They live far to the north, in the mountains. See his paws? They’re hard like a goat’s for climbing around on rocks, but segmented so they can spread out and keep them from sinking into the snow. They have all sorts of remarkable adaptations.” She’s in her element, flushed with pride and happiness. So happy, laughing, so excited and youthful in her sleeveless Muggle top and denim shorts, she looks more irresistible than ever. Ginny can barely stand it.

“Oh God,” she says faintly.

Luna glances up with sudden concern, but at the look on Ginny’s face, her own suddenly opens up, vulnerable, frightened, lonely, desperate.

From here, there’s nothing Ginny can do but kiss her, as she did before, so many years ago.

\---

_The three of them are sitting in the kitchen, eating breakfast: Luna, her father, Ginny. It’s an existence she could get used to. Luna’s home is practically untouched by the war. Here, they can talk about it just as seriously, even more so, than at Hogwarts, but it seems far away, a matter of ideals rather than facts, from the clean, bright kitchen at the base of the windmill. Ginny feels more complete and happy than she has in longer than she cares to remember. Luna’s father doesn’t have any trouble with their sharing a room and a bed, nor does he feel uncomfortable with the way they hold hands at breakfast and occasionally kiss each other on the cheek._

_Ginny could get used to this, really._

_She’s scraping up the last traces of her oatmeal when a loud knock sounds on the door. Mr. Lovegood gets up to answer it, checking first with a spell to make sure it’s no threat — protocol. He doesn’t say who it is, but a moment later he opens the door, and Harry stumbles in._

_His robes are torn, and he’s covered in mud and blood. His eyes are wide and haunted, his face gaunt and set with grim lines. He looks desperately around, swaying slightly on his feet._

_“Ginny.” His voice cracks. “They told me I’d find you here. Please, Gin, I — I need you.”_

_She looks at him, at Luna, back at him. She loves him just as much as she always has._

_She goes to him without a backward glance._

\---

In the afternoon, sprawled on the bed with the other Luna’s head buried in her shoulder, she can feel the other girl’s tears against her skin. She tangles her hands in Luna’s hair and holds her close, breathing in her scent. She can feel her heartbeat when their bare chests touch.

There is nothing, nothing that she’s ever loved this much.

\---

_The war has been over for one minute exactly._

_Voldemort is gone for good._

_Harry kisses her gratefully, with all the love and relief and need he has in him._

_Ginny puts Luna out of her mind._

\---

During supper, a knock sounds on the door. There are no more safety protocols to follow, so Luna merely opens it to Harry’s smiling face. She stands aside, and he comes in.

“I thought I might find you here,” he says. “Catching up with each other?”

“Luna’s finally found a colony of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks,” Ginny tells Harry conversationally. From his perch on top of the cupboards right by Harry’s head, Cuthbert gives a screech, and Harry jumps.

“That’s quite something,” he says with a laugh, stretching out his hand to it. Cuthbert snaps at his fingers. “All right, not friendly.” He looks over at Ginny. “Ron and Hermione have come over. I thought you might want to come see them before they leave for the evening?”

Ginny looks at him, at Luna, back at him, and finds to her half-bitter, half-relieved surprise that she loves him just as much as she always has. She goes to him, and he kisses her lightly on the lips.

She walks away with his hand at her hip, not daring to give Luna a single backward glance.


End file.
